Tiberi, Meehan lead efforts to delay changes to Medicare’s Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule

Efforts to delay changes to the Medicare payment system for clinical lab tests were led on Tuesday by U.S. Reps. Pat Tiberi (R-OH) and Patrick Meehan (R-PA).

Medicare is expected to make changes to the clinical lab test payment system, known as the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS), as directed by the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, H.R. 4302.

Tiberi, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and Meehan led a group of 23 legislators on Tuesday who urged the Obama administration to delay changes to CLFS.

“Updating the CLFS is a highly complex task with significant implications for all stakeholders, with a reach far beyond the Medicare program,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter. “We believe the critical alterations to the CLFS must be accomplished in a deliberate and measured manner, so that laboratories have sufficient time, once the final rule and sub-regulatory guidance are issued, to comply. Given the delays in the rulemaking process, the Jan. 1, 2017, effective date for the new CLFS payment methodology is not feasible and should be delayed.”

In the letter to acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Andy Slavitt, the legislators said that CMS should work with Congress and stakeholders in laboratory communities on changes.

“It is imperative that both the agency and laboratories are afforded the best opportunity to construct this market-based payment system, and implementation should be done in a fair and reasonable manner in the best interests of beneficiaries, clinicians, laboratories and the Medicare program,” the legislators wrote.